Ready, Fire, Aim: Zero to $100 Million in No Time Flat

Chapter 15. AIMING THE MARKETING, PART 1: A Quick Crash Course

To get your business through its first stage (from zero to $1 million in revenues), you had to become an expert at selling one product to one audience of prospective customers. To get your business through the next stage (from $1 million to $10 million), you are going to have to expand your product line—and that means expanding your marketing skills.

Don't worry. You don't have to go back to school and earn an MBA. You already know what is most important about marketing. You know where prospects can be found, how to create products that appeal to them, and how to give them offers they find very hard to refuse.

Everything you will learn in this chapter is, in some way, just a refinement of what you have already learned. But let's start by talking about you—how you can improve your skills as a marketer.

HOW SALES-ORIENTED ARE YOU?

If you're a natural salesperson, that's great. If you're not, you have to recognize that as a potential drawback and compensate for it by hiring or partnering with a strong salesperson to carry the selling weight. Your chief salesperson will need adequate compensation (it could be as much as you make) and all of your support and encouragement. You are the jockey, but he is the horse that will bring you across the finish line.

Even if you aren't going to be making sales yourself, you have to be in charge of them. You have to take responsibility for sales moving up. This isn't The Apprentice, where ...